Summing up the mood in the Valley, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah has said that Kashmiris no longer trust the Central government and would rather have Chinese ‘come in’. “The emotional bond is gone, they wiped it out,” the 82-year-old National Conference leader said in an interview on Wednesday.

Abdullah, who was in detention for eight months following the scrapping of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, said in an interview to news portal The Wire, “To be honest, I wonder if you will find anybody who will call themselves an Indian, they don’t feel Indian… Because they can no longer trust, the unity of the Muslim majority state with India was on trust. Today, when China is advancing, they would rather have Chinese coming in.”

“Kashmir went against the current to join Gandhi’s India, not Modi’s India, because there was trust… today there are security personnel in every street, where is the freedom?” he asked.

The Article 370 that accorded special status to Jammu and Kashmir was abrogated on August 5, 2019, and the state was bifurcated into two Union Territories — Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir. This was accompanied by the detention of all mainstream political leaders and complete communication and commercial lockdown.

Commenting on the developments in August, 2019, Abdullah said that it had left him ‘deeply shaken and upset’. Abdullah, seen as the most prominent pro-India face in the Valley, added that by putting me under detention, the Centre had branded him as a traitor’ and Kashmiris, on the other hand, saw him as a ‘servant of India’

Talking about his meeting with PM Modi days ahead of the abrogation, Abdullah said that Modi did not say a word about Articles 370 and 35A. The former Chief Minister emerged from that meeting believing the two Articles were not in danger.